


The Unofficial Gospel of Franklin P. Nelson

by Saucery



Series: Daredevil Stories [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Abandonment, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angel Powers, Angel Sex, Angel Wings, Angelic Grace, Bisexual Character, Bisexuality, Blindness, Body Image, Caretaking, Courage, Drama, Fallen Angels, Falling In Love, First Time, Half-Human, Having Faith, Hope, Hurt/Comfort, Idealism, Insecurity, Light Angst, Loss of Virginity, Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Protectiveness, Recovery, Redemption, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rescue, Romance, Saving the World, Secret Identity, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Sacrifice, Serious Injuries, Supernatural Elements, Tenderness, Vigilantism, Wing Kink, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-03-30 15:18:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3941632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Matt is an actual avenging angel, and Foggy is the not-quite-hapless human that Matt imprints on, like a baby duckling of righteous wrath.</p><p>Yes, there is eventual wing-sex. Enjoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

 

Foggy had seen some weird stuff in Hell’s Kitchen, but there was nothing weirder than stumbling upon a fallen angel in the alley behind Schmo’s Burgers. A very pretty, very bloody angel, naked and shuddering and badly wounded, with an alarming pallor to him, a pallor that, in Foggy’s inexpert opinion, usually coincided with approaching death. The angel’s wings were torn and threadbare, his tattered white feathers charred to black at the tips, as if singed. Because of the friction of hurtling through the atmosphere? Cripes.

Everybody knew that angels and demons were, like, _around_ , but hardly anybody ever saw them, because they generally operated off the radar, waging a quiet war that only broke into visible conflict when it involved human hostages or human vessels, or—as in this situation—a fallen angel. The media had an obsession with those, alternately romanticizing and villainizing them, but all that obsessive coverage had accomplished was to make fallen angels hot property. Bounty hunters across the globe made it their business to hunt and capture such angels, selling them to the highest bidder in illegal slave markets that supplied perverts, collectors, mad scientists and evil governments. Not that there were any governments that weren’t at least partly evil—including the American government—but still.

Basically, if Foggy did the sensible thing and turned around and abandoned the angel to its own devices, said angel might wind up being cut open on a dissection table, or raped by an increasingly depraved series of slave owners, or acquired by vengeful demons and tortured sadistically. Or worse. There was always worse.

So, Foggy didn’t do the sensible thing. He wasn’t normally given to being sensible, anyway. Sure, taking a fallen angel home with him was tantamount to painting a very big, neon-colored target on his own back, but it wasn’t like Foggy wasn’t already being targeted by Union Allied, the Japanese mafia and a nameless super-villain with a finger in each one of Hell’s Kitchen’s nastiest, stickiest pies. That just came with the territory of being a lawyer dumb enough to have a conscience.

“Hey,” Foggy said, kneeling in front of the angel as it lay prone in the alley, where it had apparently crash-landed between overflowing trashcans that stank of rotting food. The angel himself smelled of ozone and ash and lightning, pure and electric. “My name’s Foggy. You’ve lost a lot of blood, so I’m just gonna take you to my place and get a nurse friend of mine to check on you, okay? If I took you to a hospital, you’d get reported to SkyWatch, and I bet you wanna avoid attention from that particular national watchdog, given that it’s essentially an excuse for crazy experimentation. They might’ve even tracked your descent via satellite, which means we need to get you away from here before they, er, triangulate your location. Or whatever it is they do.”

The angel lifted his head, and Foggy gasped, horrified by what he saw. Instead of eyes, the angel had red, smoking hollows, as if someone had stabbed his sockets with scorching pokers. “Jesus. Jesus, what—what happened to your eyes?”

“They were burned out,” the angel rasped. “By my Grace.”

“Because you’re half-human, now? Your biology couldn’t handle it? Fuck. Uh, sorry for the language.”

A flash of pained amusement flickered across the angel’s face, and—

And Foggy couldn’t leave him here. He just couldn’t.

So he tore a strip off the bottom of his shirt, even though it was his only decent office shirt, part of the outfit he wore to court. He bound that strip around the angel’s eyes, as carefully as he could, because he was certain that leaving those empty sockets exposed wasn’t a great idea. Then, he shrugged off his suit and wrapped it around the angel’s shoulders, which were still shuddering, like the angel was in shock.

“What’s your name?” Foggy asked, just to take the angel’s mind off the fact that he’d… _fallen from Heaven_ , crap. How must it feel, to be kicked out by your family, to be cast aside, to be condemned?

“M-Matthew,” the angel answered, and his stuttering was so human, so vulnerable, that Foggy felt a bizarre surge of protectiveness.

“Listen, Matt,” Foggy said, because he figured that calling the poor guy Matthew, like he was called in Heaven, would just be an unpleasant reminder. “I’m going to start standing at the count of three, and if you can, try to stand up with me. Lean on me, if you have to.” Foggy counted to three, and gave a mighty heave—as mighty a heave as his distinctly non-muscular physique could manage, anyhow—and Matt, who was way more muscular, staggered to his feet, leaning heavily on Foggy.

“God is still with me,” Matt murmured, “for He has sent me a Good Samaritan, not a mercenary or a demon.”

Being characterized as a Good Samaritan made Foggy distinctly uncomfortable, because, yeah, he was a decent citizen, but he wasn’t a saint. A portion of him was far too aware of Matt’s beauty and his nudity, despite the pathetic state Matt was in, and Foggy swallowed around a bitter taste of guilt. “I could be a mercenary in disguise.”

“No, you couldn’t be,” Matt said. “You are not lying to me. I can sense it.”

“How?”

“Your heartbeat. Your sweat. The scent of your soul.”

“Boy, would that be a useful skill to have, in court,” Foggy pondered aloud. “Scenting souls. Oh, I’m a lawyer, by the way. If you couldn’t tell by my unparalleled eloquence. Could you… tuck your wings in a bit more? Make ’em fit under my suit? That way, you’ll look like just another guy that’s been brutally mugged. There’re too many muggings, around here, and people pretend not to notice their victims, because nobody wants to be a witness.” Foggy snorted. “Ain’t humanity grand?”

Matt hunched, huddling into an even tighter ball of clammy skin and grimy feathers, and Foggy’s jacket settled over him more snugly, even though it barely reached his thighs. Thighs that Foggy was not thinking about. At all.

“Like that, yeah. Thanks.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Matt said, and Foggy’s heart did an odd squeeze-and-thump, like it had tripped in the middle of doing a Pilates workout. He definitely had to return that DVD to Karen. The workouts weren’t doing much for him. Clearly. After all, he could scarcely lug an injured angel to safety without panting like a retired racehorse that hadn’t done anything but lounge around in a stable for the past decade, eating fresh straw and getting plump. Heck, even straw had to be healthier than all the pizzas Foggy consumed on a regular basis.

“Just,” Foggy wheezed, “let’s,” he wheezed some more, “slow down.” It was a five-minute walk from here to Foggy’s rathole of an apartment, which itself was on the fifth floor, with no elevator to get there. The prospect of dragging Matt up all those stairs was daunting, and they weren’t even there, yet. Foggy entertained a brief fantasy of Matt flying him up to his narrow balcony, but a) Matt’s wings were currently unoperational, and b) it wasn’t like Matt could risk exposure.

Being a Good Samaritan was _exhausting_.

 

* * *

 

“What did you do, Foggy,” Claire said, flatly, when Foggy rang her up. It wasn’t even a question.

“Hey, I take offense at the implication that I am to blame for every misfortune that befalls me. Not that you’re a misfortune,” he said to Matt, hurriedly. Matt was sitting on Foggy’s couch, atop an unrolled blanket, bleeding onto it with a quiet fortitude. “You’re a, um, blessing. Possibly an actual blessing. From God.”

“Foggy,” repeated Claire, warningly. “I recognize that tone. It’s a woman, isn’t it?”

“Uh. No.”

“Then a very attractive man.”

“He isn’t a man. I mean, he’s a half-man. Half-angel. Type of. Person.”

“A fallen angel,” said Claire, disbelievingly, because she truly was that clever and could connect the dots just that fast. “You have a _fallen angel_?”

“I couldn’t just leave him there to die! Or be hunted, or arrested, or—”

“I got it,” Claire muttered. “This is a typical charity case of yours.”

“Charity is a virtue,” Matt mumbled from the couch, semi-dreamily. So his super-senses could pick up on Claire’s voice, at the other end of the line? Neat.

“You do realize,” Claire said, “that you could sell him to the Russian trafficking syndicate for a million bucks, or hand him in to SkyWatch for a hefty reward.”

“I like being the only hefty object in my life, thanks,” Foggy said. He wasn’t unnerved; Claire was just making a hypothetical point, and she would never betray him, nor urge him to betray his conscience. Claire’s own conscience was made of steel. Ice-cold steel. All she was doing was testing Foggy’s resolve.

“Foggy…” Claire sighed. “All right. I’m coming over. Lucky for the both of you that I’m not on my night shift.”

“I’m lucky to have even met you, Claire,” Foggy said, fervently and sincerely. If Claire wasn’t around to wipe his ass—metaphorically, and, that one time they didn’t talk about, literally—then Foggy wouldn’t have survived in Hell’s Kitchen as long as he had. Claire had fixed him and his clients up more often than he could remember.

Claire harrumphed. “I’ll bring my med-kit. Just… get him cleaned up, would you? The fall must’ve banged him up something fierce, and if you can wash him down for me, I’ll be able to disinfect his wounds and stitch them up, right away.”

“Roger,” said Foggy, but before he could wish Claire goodbye, she hung up. “Well, Matt,” Foggy beamed, brightly. “You’ve just made an appointment with the best nurse in the city.”

“Mm,” Matt said, listing to his left side, as if too exhausted to hold himself upright. The scratches and lacerations from his fall were beginning to crust over, and the impromptu bandage Foggy had tied around his eyes didn’t have any new blood on it, which meant that maybe Matt was healing faster than a plain, vanilla human would. Matt mightn’t be capable of regrowing his eyes, anymore, but he might, at least, heal more quickly from their loss.

What a relief. Foggy had been worried about infection setting in. Matt must _hurt_ , all over, but especially where his eyes used to be. Just imagining it made Foggy made sick to his stomach. He had no clue what Matt had done to deserve the fall, but this? This was just unnecessary torment. Agony of this sort didn’t improve anyone’s moral fiber. All it did was reduce them to their pain, and folks in pain tended to do stupid shit. More stupid shit, not less.

Foggy hastened to his bathroom, soaked a recently laundered towel in tepid water, and brought it back out to where Matt was, letting it drip on his carpet. He sat next to Matt on the couch, shushing him when he flinched, patting the towel gently over Matt’s torso and arms, which had taken the worst of the damage. The blood flaked off onto the towel, in rusty stains, and Foggy went to the bathroom for two more towels, before Matt was mostly clean. He was still weak, though, terribly weak, and he folded sideways onto Foggy’s lap, shivering as the moisture from his sponge-bath dried.

And all of a sudden, it didn’t matter that Matt was gorgeous, or naked, or curled up on Foggy’s lap. All Foggy could see, then, was the strange defenselessness of Matt’s nape, the trembling of his lower lip, and the childlike trust he was putting in Foggy, for reasons that Foggy couldn’t begin to fathom or understand. All Foggy could see was somebody that needed help.

Foggy rearranged the blanket on the couch until it covered Matt, shielded him, warmed him. He stroked Matt’s hair back from his forehead, and felt Matt relax, in gradual degrees, descending into what must be his very first sleep. It would be unfamiliar to him, and perhaps even frightening, to be all alone in the dark, so Foggy resolved to stay with him until he woke.

“Hang in there, buddy,” Foggy whispered. “Claire will be here any minute.”

 

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

  


Claire was there within thirty minutes, to be exact. Her lips were pinched and her eyes were narrow, although they did widen gratifyingly when she saw the wings on Matt’s back.

Surprising Claire was like surprising Fate—almost impossible to do, and incredibly rewarding, precisely because of that. But Claire switched to her usual business-like attitude when she saw Matt’s condition, and woke him to stitch him up and dab him with iodine. Foggy soothed Matt through every wince, and Claire raised her eyebrows when Matt clung onto Foggy’s hand.

“He’s imprinted on you,” Claire said, sarcastically. “How cute.”

Foggy blushed. “He’s just. I’m not. That’s not what this is.”

“Isn’t it?”

Matt swayed toward Claire, like a flower toward the sun. “You’re bright,” Matt said, hazily, and Foggy tried not to feel jealous. “So bright.”

“Yeah, yeah, angel-boy. Let’s get this blindfold off you.”

“Stop—” Foggy tried to warn her, but she’d taken it off.

“Oh, fuck,” she said, struck with horror. “Who _did_ this to you?”

“His Grace blinded him,” Foggy said, noting that the hollows had healed completely, although they were gummy with drying blood.

“I didn’t ask you. My patient can answer for himself.”

“Foggy tells the truth,” Matt said. “As ever.”

“That’s why he doesn’t make any money,” Claire deadpanned, although she was still palpably upset. “I’m going to disinfect your sockets, okay, kid?”

“I am three-hundred-and-twenty years old,” Matt said, and Foggy coughed in astonishment. “You are the child, to me.”

“Right now? You resemble a newborn lamb that hasn’t found its feet. So be quiet and let me disinfect you. This might sting.”

It did sting, because Matt jumped, and his grip tightened painfully on Foggy’s fingers. Foggy held on, despite Claire’s pointed, mildly accusing glance. Foggy wasn’t taking advantage of Matt. He wasn’t. He just couldn’t stand to let Matt to suffer by himself.

After she was finished, Claire left, but not before making Foggy promise to call her if Matt got worse, and patting Matt’s hair awkwardly. So Claire had become fond of Matt, too. There was just something about him, wasn’t there?

It was almost midnight, and Foggy was groggy, but Matt must be groggier, given what he’d been through.

“You stayed with me while I slept,” Matt said, abruptly, when Claire had gone.

“I, er. Did I bother you? You should take my bed, and I’ll take the couch.”

“No,” Matt said, “ _no_. You’ll sleep with me.” He paused. “Please,” he tacked on, at the end, like he knew that the word would bury itself in Foggy’s heart like a flame-tipped spear.

“I’m not sure that’d be appropriate,” Foggy hedged, for the sake of his own sanity.

“Why not?” Matt said, and, Jesus, could he really have no clue? After being alive for three centuries?

“Never mind,” Foggy replied, because he was _not_ giving The Talk to an angel that was probably traumatized and had no ability to process complex social cues. “All right. But I’ll get you something to wear, before that.”

“Human clothing is restrictive,” Matt complained. “And what about my wings?”

“I have this old college T-shirt that has plenty of holes in it, already. I could make a few more. Plus, I’m bigger than you are, so the shirt should be quite loose.”

“No pants,” Matt said, and since when had the newborn lamb become a sullen teenager negotiating privileges?

Not that not wearing pants was a privilege. And Foggy just plain refused to let his brain piece together the mental image of Matt in his T-shirt, and without any underwear. He just—

No.

“Fine,” Foggy said, weakly, and had the premonition that this was the beginning of many, many compromises. Compromises that might be emotionally compromising. For him. Matt obviously wasn’t concerned with the state of Foggy’s rationality.

Foggy was going to sleep with the most beautiful person he’d ever slept with, a person that he couldn’t have sex with, because if he did, that’d make him a bastard. Even if he was going to have to lie awake until dawn, with a flawless, half-naked body pressed close to his.

It would be torture. But Foggy was determined to emerge unscathed, and, more importantly, morally intact. He had to live up to the goodness Matt saw in him. Didn’t he?

 

* * *

 

Foggy must’ve somehow managed to sleep, because he got up with a start at the noise of a loud clang.

The bed beside Foggy was empty.

Oh, no. The bed was _empty_. What if SkyWatch had found Matt and infiltrated the apartment and—

Foggy rolled out of bed and raced to the source of that infernal clanging, because it could be a struggle in progress. Foggy felt a flare of rage so strong that he considered grabbing a knife from the kitchen and skewering anyone who so much as dared to look at Matt wrong. What had the angel done to him? Foggy was all about resolving situations by the book, according to the law, not with violence.

But the mere notion of somebody hurting Matt filled Foggy with a feverish, angry desperation. He skidded into the bathroom to see Matt crouching in the shower, the curtain swinging as he hung onto it, the bottles of shampoo and conditioner knocked to the floor.

“What on earth are you doing?” Foggy demanded, more irritated than reassured by the fact that the only threat to Matt, presently, was himself.

“I was using the shower.” Matt fumbled for the taps as he rose, unsteady as a fawn. His wings scrunched around him in the small cubicle. “Or trying to.”

“You know what a shower is?” When Matt stumbled, Foggy rushed forward to catch him by his… very bare shoulders. Foggy snatched his hands away as though from a flame.

“I got it from you.”

“Got what from me?” And did Matt have to say that like it was an STD?

Matt waved absently. “The amenities of modern living. Slang. Colloquialisms. Technology. Pop culture.”

Foggy gawped. “Are you telepathic?”

“By touch, yes. Yeah,” Matt corrected himself. “I was touching you while you slept.”

Wow. _That_ didn’t sound depraved. Or creepy. Or unintentionally arousing.

“Like this.” Matt reached for Foggy’s face, ostensibly identifying its position by Foggy’s voice, and cradled it, leaning his forehead against Foggy’s, until they were sharing breaths. It was intimate, and chaste, and… not chaste, at all.

Foggy stood stock-still. He was frozen. Matt was close enough to kiss. Wait. Could Matt hear that thought?

Seemingly not, because Matt’s expression didn’t falter when he drew back.

“You can get information from me, but not—not emotions,” Foggy hazarded. “Or intentions.”

“You’re right. Now, could you show me how to work this thing? Unless you’re fine with bathing me, yourself.”

“No!” Foggy exclaimed, when he’d gotten over Matt’s contemporary lingo. “That’s. You should. Be self-sufficient. That’s the knob for the, for the. Hot water.” He guided Matt to the knob. “And this is the soap,” he shoved the dry bar at Matt and fled outta the bathroom. “Yell for me if you need me.”

“I will always need you, I think,” Matt said, contemplatively, and Foggy tripped over the bathroom mat on his way out.

Angels were dangerous. Very dangerous. Then again, they were God’s weapons, weren’t they? Foggy just wished those weapons weren’t so good at cleaving through human hearts like knives through butter.

 

* * *

 

Matt emerged from the shower, dripping and looking like a drowned kitten. Foggy draped a towel over him (seriously, Foggy was running out of towels), returned the ripped-up T-shirt to him, and noticed that Matt’s stitches had mended as if weeks had passed, leaving not even scars behind. The threads were invisible as though they’d melted away. The peeling bandages that Foggy removed also had unmarked skin beneath them, and Matt’s eye-sockets were smooth.

Amazing.

“Your crimes couldn’t have been that grievous,” Foggy said, as he made them breakfast, finally broaching the subject that had been haunting him. “If you still have your wings. And your… angel-sight, if not the sight of your eyes.”

“I can discern the energy signatures and auras of living beings, and of the objects they have had contact with.”

“What does it all look like?”

Matt dipped his chin pensively, sniffing at the pancakes Foggy was flipping on the stove. “A world on fire.” His stomach growled, and Matt appeared bemused by it. “I believe I am hungry.”

“Never been hungry, huh? Must be a cushy gig, being an angel. Not to, er, push you to answer, but… You got exiled because you were unangelic, weren’t you?”

The question didn’t depress Matt, like Foggy had feared it would. Instead, Matt just shrugged. “I am an avenging angel, but I took my avenging too far, and started hunting humans instead of just demons.”

“Like, going after the nasty types?”

“Rapists. Mafiosos. Smugglers. Murderers.”

“Makes sense. We humans make at least as much of a mess as the demons do.” Foggy slid the pancakes onto plates, laying them out on the rickety kitchen table that could scarcely seat two. “But attacking humans is a no-no for angels, I guess.”

“Very much so. My vendetta against sinners, demonic or human, made me unsuitable for my post, and thus, I fell.”

“Your post? As in, a military post?”

“I was appointed the guardian of this city. Given that Hell’s Kitchen, so named because of the rift it contains into Hell itself, houses many demons, I was initially stationed here a century ago. However, the humans here were not unaffected by the darkness emitted by the rift, and it settled, like soot or sediment, in their souls. Corrupting them. Luminous souls like yours are rare, in Hell’s Kitchen, and are a sign of immense innate purity.”

“You keep singing the praises of my soul, like I’m a baby unicorn. I’m not.” Foggy had fun-time handcuffs in his bedside table. That had to count for “corruption,” didn’t it?

“You may be as special as a unicorn,” Matt said, “but hey,” another jarring modernism, “you make Hell’s Kitchen tolerable. For my species. Otherwise, we would choke on the stifling stench of evil rising from the rift, and from the humans who sin around it.”

“You discourage them from sinning, though, don’t you? You—” And in a shocking moment of insight, Foggy _understood_ , and nearly dropped the forks he was putting next to the plates. “Holy shit. You’re the Daredevil. Aren’t you?”

Matt grinned unrepentantly, and Foggy was back to seeing a rebellious teenager. “An ironic name, given to me, un-ironically, by the humans I punished. Unseen whirlwind that I was.”

“You’re saying that an angel was the Daredevil, all along?” Foggy resisted the temptation to bang his skull repeatedly against the table. “On the positive side, it explains why the Daredevil doesn’t kill anyone. You _can’t_ kill humans.”

“I’m glad I fell.” Matt’s grin turned feral. “I’m off the leash.”

“Are you implying that Heaven is secretly condoning your vigilantism?” Foggy said, incredulously. And he’d been feeling sorry for Matt having fallen, when the jerk had practically asked for it!

“We fallen angels are officially off the payroll. So to speak. We can do Heaven’s dirty work, without besmirching the reputation of our Lord and Master.”

“Bloody fucking Christ,” Foggy said. “Heaven is as screwed up as Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Or Hell itself. Fire can only be fought with fire, after all.”

“Does God always operate like some kinda mafia don?”

“A righteous one, yes. The general of any army, including the Heavenly Host, must rely on strategy as much as brute force.”

“He’s like Tsun Zu.”

“He is.” A frankly disturbing adoration stole over Matt’s features, absolute in its totality. Like the product of some pretty heavy duty brainwashing. “He is glorious, wise and all-powerful.”

“If He’s so goddamn powerful—pardon my French—why doesn’t he just snap his fingers and set this crazy, cruel planet to rights?”

“Because then, there would be no virtue, and no sin. There would be nothing against which to test the mettle of the human soul.”

“All this circular logic is making my head spin.”

“Such complexities are generally too challenging for mortals to comprehend,” Matt said, blandly, and when Foggy squinted at him suspiciously, he could make out a hint of playfulness, of sarcasm, a tiny hook at the corner of Matt’s upper lip.

“Great. I’m sheltering a sassy avenging angel.”

“Your compassion will be rewarded in the afterlife.”

“Yeah? Well, I could use a six-figure check right about now.”

“Do not feign the greediness of the majority of your brethren,” Matt said, indulgently. “Your conscience is as visible to me as your spirit, and it is as bright and clear as a pane of glass.”

“Which means breaking it will bring me seven years of bad luck. Awesome. Is that why you’re fixated on me? Because I resemble a cathedral window, or something?”

“Or something,” Matt said, and this time, he did smile, sweet and startlingly lovely, so lovely that Foggy’s pulse stuttered.

Unfair. God seemed determined to make his life difficult. As if Foggy’s endless list of stupid crushes could get any stupider after adding a crush on a fallen angel to it. “Shut up and eat your pancakes,” Foggy groused, yanking a chair out for Matt and directing him to sit on it. “Your fork’s on the left.”

“It glimmers with your warmth. I have registered its location.”

“So pick it up and dig in.” Foggy took a bite of his own pancake. “Are you getting more sensitive to your surroundings? ’Cause you were more confused in the shower.”

“I am growing accustomed to reading the subtle variations in my physical environment, with the aid of the angel-sight I have.”

“Hm.” Foggy watched Matt eat his pancake and chew experimentally, before swallowing. “How’s your first taste of food?”

“Delicious,” Matt said, hushed and overwhelmed. “This must be why God favors you humans, and why I was assigned to protect you. You are… Your experiences are precious, and have an extraordinary immediacy, in spite of—or because of—your mortality.”

“Can we not discuss death at breakfast? Thanks.” But Foggy was happier than he let on, because Matt wasn’t taking his fall as a tragedy, but as a chance to discover existence anew. And that was—there was a wonder to it that made Foggy appreciate his pancakes like he’d never appreciated them before.

 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Like my writing? Want updates and sneak previews? Follow me on [Tumblr](http://saucefactory.tumblr.com/)!


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